Apologies for the late impressions.
Jonathan and I arrived to find Stew setting-up in a nice spacious student meeting room with good tables and plenty of electrical outlets. After some shifting around of chairs, we began to set up. We were soon joined by Matt and Pete, so it was mainly the five of us for the time I was there.
Beginning Chez
Stew, while I'd seen it plenty of times in photos, nothing could quite prepare me for my first encounter with the notorious
Jecklin Float, a relic from a bygone era, if not another planet!
Slipping it on was like awaiting a countdown for a launch. It was a comfy as it looks, and much lighter than I expected. The sound, while not exactly audiophile quality, was decent enough and altogether quite engaging, once I was able to set aside self-consciousness. Great fun!
Naturally, I was thrilled to spend some more time with a pair of
K-1000s. They really are just magical in their way and share lots of the speaker-like attributes that I've come enjoy with my Ultrasones, particularly the PROline 2500. I'd love to have a pair on-hand if only for acoustic music. Perhaps AKG will re-launch them eventually.
I felt fortunate to be sharing my table with
Pete. Our respective gear was quite different, yet quite conducive to mixing & matching. His yellow-foamed
Alessandro MS-1s were just a wonderful surprise. For what they cost, they do just about everything one could reasonably ask of them and with a real flair. Lightweight, comfortable rockers in a lovely, tidy package. I found myself returning to them more than a few times, trying them with different sources and amplifiers. They just made me smile and I could not find much fault in them.
Pete's
HeadFive was a surprise of a different sort. It just couldn't manage the grunt to properly drive my 40 Ohm PROlines. Switching back to the Alessandros, I tried in vain to understand the effect of the crossfeed circuit. But I failed to hear any useful difference with this pairing.
Likewise, the
LittleDotMicro+, while cute and cheerful, is not quite in the same league as the Go-Vibe as it struggled with my Ultrasones. So it was no surprise to me that Pete ended up buying Stew's PA2V2, which I didn't get the chance to hear.
Jonathan was easily the Father Christmas of the meet, pulling out goodies and toys continually for the rest of us to ogle and listen to. Of these, my favorites were his
Stax SR-001 Mk2 portable ear-speakers, which, aside from looking dead-cool in all the right ways, were and absolute sonic delight. And I shudder to think that an evening spent surfing the Audio Cubes site with an itchy credit card could land me a pair of these dandies one day.
End of Part One, more still to follow!
